World Battlefronts: Into the Saar

¶ In bomb-wrecked Saarlautern, the Germans set up their guns in the streets, fired between the flaming buildings to kill some more Americans.

¶ In Strasbourg, the enemy fought a last-ditch battle in a five-story apartment building—from room to room, from floor to floor—and more Germans were killed than Americans.

¶ In tiny, unimportant Batzendorf (eight miles from the Rhine), the enemy fought first in a manured field and then from house to house. A few more Americans died, but 52 Germans fell before two machine guns alone.

Through such bitter, bloody battling on the southern sectors last week, the Americans came close to completing the first phase of their three-weeks-old offensive. The second phase—penetrations of the mud-ugly, coal-rich Saar River valley—had already begun this week. In one bold move the Americans seized a bridge across the Saar, got a first toehold in the Saar’s Siegfried Line defenses.

Lieut. General George S. Patton’s hard-hitting Third Army had come up to the Saar area in a series of drives which the enemy furiously tried to check. The Germans spent men prodigally in counterattacks. It was clear they intended to fight for every inch of the Saar, as they had for every foot of its approaches.